On The Cover #1: Neil Young's After The Gold Rush performed by Fingers Of The Sun

Fingers of the Sun, Joe Sampson

On The Cover #1: Neil Young's After The Gold Rush performed by Fingers Of The Sun

On The Cover is a new monthly live series at hi-dive featuring bands covering influential and classic albums, from start to finish.

July 31st: Neil Young's After The Gold Rush performed by Fingers Of The Sun, with opener Joe Sampson.

Presented by Twist & Shout Records and Co-Produced by Josiah Hesse and Ian O'Dougherty, the series will feature a local opener, an informational intro to the album by Hesse, then the featured album performance. There will be a new On The Cover show on the last Wednesday of each month.

Fingers of the Sun

When Homer talked about "young Dawn with her rose-red fingers," in the Odyssey, he was probably putting down for the ages the oral tradition of the Greeks passed on for hundreds of years through lyrical phrases set to a kind of primeval music. So it seems as only fitting that some band would come along to likewise borrow some strands from an older era and put them side-by-side with modern elements in a way to make it all resonate with a vibrant creativity. Fingers of the Sun from Denver does exactly that. This lively sextet takes classic pop structures and warps the lines with psychedelic flourishes while grounding it all with impeccable four-part harmonies. Built on the ruins of the indie pop band The Pseudo Dates, this group picked up where the Pseudos left off and turned into a more sonically ambitious outfit lead by the talented songwriting team of Nathan Brasil and Suzi Allegra. Musically, this charming bunch of rapscallions are the descendents of Arthur Lee, Syd Barrett, Ray Davies and Anton Newcombe. But instead of mimicking their artistic forebears, Fingers of the Sun are forging something their own by truly crafting material almost in reaction to how sloppy so much songwriting of the present seems to be. If indeed Fingers of the Sun is indirectly named after the goddess Aurora, it's fitting enough for a kind of music that has elements of the familiar but always feels like something new

Joe Sampson

Singer/songwriter Sampson has the kind of 3:00am voice
that's equal parts chain-smoke and liquid vicodin. The
enclosed EP displays a weariness that, thankfully,
does not inspire weariness in the listener, but
instills a welling sense of release. Laconic vocals
brush against guitars and banjos; simple melodies
belie a complex tension. In the world of Paloma,
cadence is a key instrument—weighed as heavy as the
strum of a weathered six-string.